The Three Musketeers (Trilogie des Mousquetaires #1)

by Alexandre Dumas

Confidence and love made him a giant.

for that unaccountable destiny which leads men to destroy each other for the interests of people who are strangers to them and who often do not even know that they exist.

fragile and unknown threads the destinies of nations and the lives of men are suspended.

felt his heart dilated and compressed by that delicious spasm which tortures and caresses the hearts of lovers.

Nothing makes time pass more quickly or more shortens a journey than a thought which absorbs in itself all the faculties of the organization of him who thinks. External existence then resembles a sleep of which this thought is the dream. By its influence, time has no longer measure, space has no longer distance. We depart from one place, and arrive at another, that is all. Of the interval passed, nothing remains in the memory but a vague mist in which a thousand confused images of trees, mountains, and landscapes are lost.

"People, in general," he said, "only ask advice not to follow it; or if they do follow it, it is for the sake of having someone to blame for having given it."